2021 Society of Physics Students Zone 11 Regional Meeting
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Location
Virtual Meeting, University of Northern Iowa
Start Date
19-2-2021 3:00 PM
End Date
19-2-2021 4:30 PM
Publication Date
2-19-2021
Publication Type
Presentation (UNI Access Only)
Description
Contents:
- Welcome by UNI President and Astronomer, Mark Nook
- Paul Shand, UNI Physics Department Head Student Welcome and Meeting Logistics
- Keynote Presentation: The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics, Dr. Sean Carroll, Caltech
Keynote:
One of the great intellectual achievements of the twentieth century was the theory of quantum mechanics, according to which observational results can only be predicted probabilistically rather than with certainty. Yet, after decades in which the theory has been successfully used on an everyday basis, most physicists would agree that we still don't truly understand what it means. I will talk about the source of this puzzlement, and explain why an increasing number of physicists are led to an apparently astonishing conclusion: that the world we experience is constantly branching into different versions, representing the different possible outcomes of quantum measurements. This could have important consequences for quantum gravity and the emergence of spacetime.
Department
Department of Physics
Copyright
©2021 Mark Nook, Paul Sand, and Sean Carroll
File Format
video/mp4
Recommended Citation
Nook, Mark; Shand, Paul; and Carroll, Sean, "Welcome and Keynote: The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics" (2021). Society of Physics Students Regional Meeting. 2.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/sps/2021/all/2
Closed Captioning SRT File
Welcome and Keynote: The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics
Virtual Meeting, University of Northern Iowa
Contents:
- Welcome by UNI President and Astronomer, Mark Nook
- Paul Shand, UNI Physics Department Head Student Welcome and Meeting Logistics
- Keynote Presentation: The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics, Dr. Sean Carroll, Caltech
Keynote:
One of the great intellectual achievements of the twentieth century was the theory of quantum mechanics, according to which observational results can only be predicted probabilistically rather than with certainty. Yet, after decades in which the theory has been successfully used on an everyday basis, most physicists would agree that we still don't truly understand what it means. I will talk about the source of this puzzlement, and explain why an increasing number of physicists are led to an apparently astonishing conclusion: that the world we experience is constantly branching into different versions, representing the different possible outcomes of quantum measurements. This could have important consequences for quantum gravity and the emergence of spacetime.
Comments
About Sean Carroll, Keynote Speaker
Sean Carroll is a Research Professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Harvard University. His research focuses on fundamental physics and cosmology, quantum gravity and spacetime, and the evolution of entropy and complexity. He is the author of several books, most recently Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Sloan Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of London, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the host of the weekly Mindscape podcast.